Chapter 7

Vincent Valentine watched from a rooftop as one of the last groups of citizens was helped into a WRO transport and taken to the airport for evacuation. He had been watching the evacuations since they began yesterday, and though the regular ranks of protestors did nothing to hamper their efforts, the Returners openly opposed them, even throwing rocks at the evacuating people, all the while calling them cowards and sheep. The rude actions of the Returners had even caused some of the regular protestors to abandon their efforts and leave the city. So far the WRO troopers were able to handle the situation, but Vincent wasn't going to let that lower his defenses.

However, even with the evacuation nearing completion, the Returners' ranks were growing by the minute. For every one person the WRO evacuated, the Returners brought in 3. Vincent had tried to look into how they were getting people into the city, but there were just too many ways in for him to handle. Briefly he thought about shutting down the elevator to the lower city, but this would have hampered the evacuation efforts, so he decided against it. For the time being, he would have to be content with the Returners' numbers swelling. The idea did not sit well with him but since the city was about to be devoid of all innocent people he let it pass.

Vincent wasn't sure exactly what Reeve was going to do about the present situation once everyone was evacuated; it seemed to him that the Returners were using an empty Junon as a point to finally confront the WRO, most probably with open combat. Up to this point, Vincent had not seen any large weapons, only batons and other typical close quarter tools. However, he wasn't putting it past them to have weapons stashed that had more of an impact in a fight.

The sounds of yelling people made Vincent look several blocks over, and he instantly bounded from rooftop to rooftop until he looked down on what was creating the noise. Below him, he saw a poorly outnumbered three WRO troops trying to help an elderly man get into a transport while ten Returners were yelling and giving them a hard time. Vincent watched with his hand resting on the grip of Cerberus as one of the Returners spit on a WRO troop. The troop responded by trying to push the offensive Returner away, but before the trooper could notice, the Returners were puling concealed pistols out of their blue uniforms.

But before the Returners could even grin, gunshots rang out in rapid succession and all of their pistols flew out of their hands. As they grabbed their hands in shock, they heard a booming voice call out from above.

"You should learn how to use those before you pull them," Vincent said as he sneered down at the uniformed hoodlums. The ten Returners looked up at him, most of them with looks of fear in their eyes as they watched the dark figure peer down at them, his red tattered cloak billowing behind him in the wind. For a moment, everyone just stood in silence looking at Vincent. Finally one of the Returners blinked, and slowly they all began to leave the area, mumbling to themselves, trying to bolster their confidence by saying that they could have taken the mystery guy if they had a fair fight. Vincent let out a sneer as they left and holstered Cerberus. The three WRO troops looked up and nodded their thanks, and Vincent gave them a quick nod before he moved on back towards the main city square.

Once he was back looking down at the area where the protests were taking place, he noted that the regular protestor numbers were nearly gone, all replaced by blue overall wearing Returners. Vincent guessed that their numbers were somewhere over ten thousand, and again he became concerned about what Reeve's plan was to deal with them.

Even though Vincent had a phone, he rarely liked to use it (he didn't like to think of himself as being accessible). He decided to put his apprehensions behind him and reached for his phone to call Reeve. But as he flipped the phone open, a large cheer from the crowd of Returners made him look up. Vincent focused on where the cheers were directed and saw the behemoth man that he had tried to follow two days ago walking through the crowd. Along side of him was a much shorter man, though when compared to his companion there was no other way of describing him. The shorter of the two had dark red hair and red hued eyes that seemed to emit their own luminescence. As the two walked through the crowd, the red headed one lightly nodded and said a few words to the cheering crowd. Whatever it was that he was saying to the Returners, they seemed to be listening with their full attention. Vincent raised his eyebrow at this and continued to watch the two walk through the crowd. The red head continued to talk briefly to the crowd while the taller one looked annoyed at the constant attention the crowd was giving them.

It didn't take much to realize that these two men must be the leaders of the Returners, or at least highly respected. For a moment, Vincent thought that they might be about to give a sort of speech for a rally, but when he noticed that both men were carrying full packs on their backs, he realized that they were about to go somewhere. Vincent briefly debating following them. While he didn't want to leave the city in case the Returners started any acts of violence, the last of the civilians were about to leave the city, therefore only leaving the WRO forces that were quite capable of defending themselves. Before Vincent lost sight of the two men, he made his decision and followed them, all the while being concealed in the shadows.

Cloud walked at a brisk pace through the airport at the WRO Headquarters. The flight crew of the airship that had brought him here was unloading Fenrir, but he didn't wait for it to report what he had found to Reeve. Waiting for him at the entryway into the main building was a young WRO army officer.

"Sir, the Commissioner wanted me to inform you that he is in the debriefing room. If you'll follow me, I can take you there." Cloud nodded and followed the young man into the building, and after going through several guarded doors and hallways, the young man stopped at a doorway and motioned for Cloud to enter.

When Cloud stepped through, he found a rather large room with an enormous electronic map of the world on the wall. In the center of the room was a large round table that had several lights shining on the map that was placed on its surface. Reeve was standing looking at it with several other men, all of whom were wearing uniforms. Reeve looked up at Cloud and briefly said something to the men before he motioned for Cloud to follow him into an adjoining office. As Cloud walked past the table, he recognized the men's uniforms to be that of Generals in the WRO armed forces. He briefly looked down at the table and saw a detailed map of Junon with several markers placed at certain points representing fighting units. When both Reeve and Cloud entered the office, Reeve closed the door and walked to a chair behind a small workstation.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were planning on attacking the Returners in Junon," Cloud said as he nodded towards the room they just left. Reeve turned the palms of his hands upwards and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, I'm still hoping for a diplomatic solution, but I can't rule out the possibility of having to use military force. Really, it's up to them whether we fight or not. But that's neither here nor there; tell me what you found in the Facility." Cloud let out a breath before he went into the details.

"The facility's a wreck. When I got there I found the main gate in pieces inside the courtyard. Inside, there were signs of a heavily fought battle but no survivors. At first I thought that it had to have been attacked by a whole battalion, but when I entered the main facility and found the mainframe room, the security cameras showed something completely different."

"That's what makes you think it was a SOLDIER?" Reeve asked. Cloud nodded and explained.

"All of the security cameras were knocked out of order, but the mainframe and computer terminal were working fine. I was able to access the video records and saw the attack. The only attacker I saw was a massively huge guy, bigger than Barret. He was using some sort of dual bladed sword and he was deflecting everyone's bullets that were fired at him. I saw him cut some of the troopers in two before he came closer to the camera. Before it cut out, I got a clear view of him. There's no mistaking it, he was wearing the old uniform and his eyes had the Mako glow, though they seemed to emit their own light, but that could have just been the lighting. I'm not sure, the video quality wasn't the best."

"Still, it's unpleasant to think about. What else did you find?"

"Well, I was able to pull up the log history of the computer of the files that he must have accessed. I printed it out here," Cloud said as he unfolded the piece of paper and handed it to Reeve. Reeve took it and placed some half-mooned glasses on his nose before he looked over the document.

"Hmm, Mako Radiation Therapy and Jenova Cell Injection; just the files I was afraid someone would try to steal."

"I know what those two are, but I've never heard of the next one," Cloud said as he stood next to the desk to point out the name he was talking about. Reeve looked down at it and nodded.

"Ah, Stagnant Mako. Vincent or Shelke could tell you more about it, but basically it was a different sort of Mako that the Lifestream tried to isolate. After Professor Gast left Shinra, Hojo tried to inject the stuff into test subjects but apparently it didn't have the effect he was looking for or something, because he only did it to about five or six subjects."

"The Tsviets?" Cloud asked.

"Yes, it was them. Oddly enough, the Tsviets weren't injected with Jenova Cells, only Stagnant Mako. Sort of strange that Hojo wouldn't put those cells into them since he tried to put those in nearly everything he made." Reeve frowned at remembering the mad scientist and went back to looking at the list. He made a confused face and looked back up at Cloud.

"What's this Project X?" Cloud was taken back by the fact that Reeve didn't know about it.

"I thought you knew what it was. Didn't you read the files before you put them in there?" Reeve sighed and took of his glasses before he shook his head.

"Cloud, there are over four thousand files on the SOLDIER Program alone. If I took the time to read them all I still wouldn't be anywhere near the halfway point. And besides, I had more urgent matters to attend to." At this last part, Reeve motioned his hand around him, meaning that he was too busy rebuilding the world after Meteorfall. Cloud lightly ran his hand over the back of his hair and shrugged his shoulders.

"Fair enough. I guess it doesn't matter now, that giant deleted the file while he was there. Are there any other copies somewhere?" Reeve shook his head and ran his hand over the file number for Project X.

"No, I doubt it. The file number is in the nine thousands, so it was recovered from Deep Ground." Reeve dropped the document on the desk and leaned back in his chair. He let out a yawn as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. When he was done, he looked at Cloud and lightly shook his head. "What do you think about all this?" Cloud thought about it for a moment and then pointed down at the list.

"Well, it's kind of stupid, but at first I thought that the Returners, or whoever did this, were going to start their own SOLDIER Program. That was the impression I got when I looked at those other files that were accessed." Reeve sat back up in his chair and picked up the document, this time turning to one of the other printed pages and he looked at the long listing of just numbered files.

"These were quarterly reports," Reeve said with a narrowed brow.

"Yeah, I looked at the first one. It was a report on Jenova Cell Harvestation or something. It gave the amount of cells that were recovered and where they were shipped. The files ended at 803, which if I did my math right was only twenty-two years after the first one."

"Makes since. The quarterly reports were coming from Nibelhiem. The reports stopped after Jenova was moved to Midgar and Hojo could extract cells from there."

"Well it's all pretty useless. They can't do anything without the cells." Reeve began to nod, but then stopped dead in his tracks. Quickly he grabbed the list and began to scan through all of the folded pages, frantically looking for something. Cloud saw the instant change in Reeve's emotions and became anxiously concerned.

"What is it?" Cloud asked, but Reeve only frantically ran his finger down the list and mumbled to himself.

"Please don't be here, please don't-" but whatever it was that he was looking for, his fears were confirmed. Reeve let out an expletive and slumped over on the desk. Cloud again posed his question and Reeve simply pointed to the last file on the list.

"'Findings Inside the Deep Ground Facility'? What all was found in there?" Reeve took in a deep breath and explained.

"A lot of different stuff, Cloud; physical documents, computer files, weapons, and a vial of the last remaining Jenova Cells. Hojo must have stored it there in case of an emergency or something. When we found it, I decided to just leave the vial in the storage room we found it in and sealed the doorway. That facility was hard enough to get into and as long as the vial was unknown to anyone, I felt it would be safe there."

"But now they know where it's at," Cloud said, now understanding Reeve's urgency. Reeve stood and looked Cloud in the eyes with a newfound conviction.

"That's right. Cloud, I need you to go into Midgar, break into Deep Ground, and get that vial before this enemy does." Cloud understood the danger that the vial could do in the wrong hands. Without saying anything more, Cloud nodded and left the small office.

Back outside, the airship crew was finished unloading Fenrir, so Cloud jumped on and fired up the engine. Cloud knew that Midgar, and especially the central sector, was no place to go without being prepared. He would have to restock on his supplies before he entered the ruins, so he sped off towards Edge and 7th Heaven.